Sunday, October 08, 2006

North Korea's probable test of a nuclear weapon on Monday has triggered the second nuclear crisis in 13 years on the Korean peninsula.

In 1993, North Korea announced it would pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, leaving it free to divert nuclear material from its energy reactors to make a nuclear weapon and setting off a round of crisis diplomacy led by the Clinton administration. The result was the so-called agreed framework, which - in return for supplies of fuel oil to North Korea - froze most aspects of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme for the rest of the decade.

The agreed framework was in effect consigned to history when the Bush administration came to power in 2001. The new administration argued that although the road to a plutonium-based nuclear bomb had been frozen, the North Koreans were cheating by attempting to develop a uranium-based bomb that was not explicitly addressed by the agreement.

That five years later, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon will be widely interpreted as a sign of the failure of the tougher approach favoured by the Bush team.

Props to DemFromCT for pointing it out this morning. Welshman also opines - and El Piscador called it.

Oh, and reading Sadly, No this morning, I was caught by Brad's take on it:

In a normal country with a normal media, watching the craziest country on Earth get nuclear weapons would be a big deal. It would also be seen as a crippling blow to Bush’s doctrine of preemption, which stated that invading Iraq would somehow, someway deter countries like Iran and North Korea from pursuing nuclear wepoans. But we don’t live in a normal country, with normal people or a normal press. We live in America, a country where nobody reads, where we’re taught to be uncritical, and where we’re bombarded by ridiculous amounts of advertising each and every day. What I’m trying to say is, we’re fucking stupid.